god and his penis

This is the most thought provoking blog post I read this past week. Just the title, “Dear God, do you have a penis?” makes you feel uncomfortable in so many ways.

Like others who peruse through my blog to get a deeper glimpse into my scattered mind and heart, I enjoy checking out vomitaceous thoughts of many of the other Quest bloggers. Some good, some bad, some fluff, some deep, some always ranty, some too happy, etc. One blog [amongst many] I’d call your attention to belongs to “Brian.” In his words, Brian is “a materialist wishing to be a minimalist – an ambivalent mess desiring to be a lover of others – a fearful man hoping for great courage – a husband-in-process – a father-in-training – a student of friendship.” He and his family have been at Quest for the past year+ and I appreciate his willingness to wrestle with hard questions – even if it leaves alot of mud on his face. Here’s a short excerpt from one of his posts this past week:

Dear God, Do you have a penis?

I know, you’re immediately interested (or pissed).

As I have been thinking about gender and sexuality lately, I have some questions for God:

1.Are you male? Because if not, we’ve been incorrectly calling you “Him” or “He” and saying “His” which, the last time I checked were all pronouns associated with maleness. And I know that we say, “God is outside of gender” or “God is gender-less” but there is still a great ignorance in the fact that we have continued to label our Higher Being with male language.

Of course, the alternatives are few. After all, this is God we are talking about here.

We can: use the name “God” all the time, but then you are left with saying awkwardly repetitive things like, “God loves God’s children so much that God didn’t want them to perish, so God sent God’s son to save all our sorry asses.”

A bit “God-y”, eh?

We can also: eliminate gender altogether, so God becomes an “it.” If God is an “it”, then I think I want to change religions. It is way too impersonal for me. She/He (clever foreshadowing) has to be more than an “it.” [read the entire post]

18 Responses

i love this… it totally embodies the fact that our language is one of the greatest constrictors… we are stuck… think about the word “love” in the english language… how do you differentiate in english, “i love pizza” “i love God” “i love my mom” “i love office space”…

it is also a huge struggle to define infinite things with finite terms… one of the greater challenges here on earth, in my humble opinion…

the (phallocentric) language we use to describe our faith and god isn’t surprising given the christian obsession with masculine power. is god male, female, or does he transcend our sex/gender categories altogether, and is just wholly other? i’m gonna put my money on the latter.

on another note, i think it’s so important to call into question the assumptions that undergird the things we believe. our belief’s about god’s gender did not emerge from a vacuum afterall, and should be subjected to scrutiny, especially considering how important these beliefs are.

i think such questioning isn’t a mark of liberalism or conservatism; just intellectual honesty, which thankfully isn’t staked to an ideology.

I’ve heard, but do not know for sure myself, that there are names in the Bible which refer to God but are feminine (Elohim, a plural feminine?? I don’t know exactly why that’s what is coming to my mind). The “Wisdom of God”, believed by some to be incarnated as Jesus, is “Sophia”.

Personally, I sometimes say “He” and sometimes “She”, and I find (both Biblically and personally) that God is both and neither.

jklam: I agree with your statement that “such questioning isn’t a mark of liberalism or conservatism; just intellectual honesty, which thankfully isn’t staked to an ideology.” That’s much more Christ-like than the response I had in mind to rebut LG’s comment.

I can answer Brian’s 4th question using the scriptures from the good ole’ Bible in which I believe:

Brian’s 4th question states:
“Why was Jesus a man?”

Here is my answer from scriptures:

Genesis 2:21-23 tells us that God put Adam into a deep sleep, during which time God made Adam’s bride, Eve, from Adam’s side—a wound in Adam’s side produced a bride, the Bible called Eve.
After the last Adam (JESUS, a male) died upon the cross—suffering the sleep of death for everyone—His side was pierced by a spear thrust (John 19:34). In His death he paid the penalty for mankind’s sins (1 Corinthians 15:1–4). Those who will repent and put their faith in Him are united with Christ in a relationship which the Bible compares it to that of a bride towards her husband (2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:27; Revelation 19:6–8). Thus a wound in the last Adam’s (JESUS) side also produced a bride—the true Church!—‘a glorious bride, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing … holy and without blemish’ (Ephesians 5:27).

“Why is the background of much of our theology from the perspective of white males?”

The answer to this question has historical roots in racism. You did not start it I did not start it but we are living in and out the consequences of it. I believe theology from the ‘white males’ perspective was embraced in our churches because of inferiority standards and to keep the races separated. And all other reasons are the results of this…

I thank Brian for his thoughts…he has made it very clear that we need to focus on the fact that God is a Spirit. Thank you for posting this Pastor. Okay I will not post another consecutive message…hehehehe.

These are great questions with which to wrestle. We miss out so much when we don’t engage the hard questions, even if we end up with the same conclusions we had previously held.

For me, the “God” and “Godself” language is a little bit impersonal. It sounds like a pro wrestler talking about himself in the third person all the time. However, I certainly recognize the issues with which people are dealing when they use this language and I wouldn’t try to impose my preference on them.

When I address God in prayer as “Father” or refer to “Him” I don’t picture my dad or another male human being. I do find precedent for this kind of language in my personal prayer life in the example of how Jesus prayed, though. I’m not trying to give any pat answers — just sharing where I am coming from.

Presumably Jesus has a penis. He also has a Palestinian appearance, experience working as a carpenter, no experience being a parent, and didn’t have a chance to get old before dying. God became human, so God had to become a particular human, who has a gender along with all the other sorts of different particular details–and if anything is universal about being human, it’s the fact that we all have those different particular details.

But Jesus doesn’t exhaust the Trinity. Taken together, God as Trinity is transcendent, far above and beyond everything earthly. If transcendent, isn’t the Trinity also beyond gender?

And that’s without even touching the whole realm of metaphor–the Bible gives us a surprising array of feminine metaphors for God, given the patriarchy of the time.

I meant to say above that I believe Jesus can identify with our experiences of parenthood even though he never had kids–and likewise I believe Jesus can identify with my experience of being female even though he wasn’t.

In the same vein, the Trinity’s transcendence means that it’s fine to say He or She in prayer. We can’t reduce all of God to just one gender.

As you know, this is an issue very close to my heart. Thank you for taking it on here.

One of the reasons I love Jesus is because he treated women so differently than any other man of his day…He allowed them to sit at his feet and learn, he allowed a bleeding woman to touch him (when everyone else would have freaked out becuase she made him unclean), he had private and personal conversations with women he “shouldn’t” be talking to. I think God had to come as a man, not because man most closely represented God, but because the way women were treated needed to be overturned and redeemed more than the way men were treated.

Ok Just to deflect heat off E here is a joke. .. a kid asks his mom “Mom, is God a man or a woman?” She thinks and says “well son God is kinda both… “well is God black or white? ” she replies again “I think God is kinda both” … “Mom, is God Micheal Jackson?”

[…] would be different if white supremacy hadn’t taken over”? September 28th, 2007 A: The answer to this question has historical roots in racism. You did not start it I did not start it but we are living in and out the consequences of it. I […]

I think we have to keep in mind the cultural context of when Jesus lived…in some ways I think this helps me understand why Jesus was a male…it was a male dominant society. Just as we move from “Do not kill one another” to “Love one another” in the Old to New Testament. Maybe people we’re not ready for a female messiah then, and probably not now either. (maybe a female president, though?)

[…] a follow up to Brian and his question “Does God have a penis? I was surfing the web and found Eugene Echo’s site and he was blogging about Brian who goes to his church. I couldn’t resit answering […]

[…] a guy named Brian and his question “Does God have a penis? I was surfing the web and found Eugene Echo’s site and lack of answer while doing some research on biblical masculinity. If Brian came to my […]